[suggestion] text adventures

Well this was supposed to be a surprise but I am working on a mod that adds text adventures to the game. They are quests that have several choices and can span up to 10 goodie huts. I wonder if the devs would be interested in doing some for the core game?

Nice to hear! I am looking forward to your mod! I would like to offer you my help writing some quests but my wording is too bad. I am german. (I have just finished my magister in german and philosophy and I have 2 months off now and have lot of freetime )

Agreed. I would really love to see these in the core game. It would add more of a dash to the rpg side of that game. I loved King Arthur The wargame because this. Actually, I really want to see more quests period in the game. I'm lucky if I run across one or two it seems. And they are so very brief. A good chance to help the player immerse themself in the lore/world should never be passed up.

On same location text adventures would be so awesome.   Not that the AI could ever do them but still...

To some extent, that's what they're trying to do with the quests, but the implementation is shallow.  I would love to see them much more in depth, especially if they provided different options based on the stats of the Champion. For example, high INT score unlocks specific text options, high dex/str might unlock others in some situations.

But writing enough of those things to feel like they aren't repetitive is a *ton* of work. I don't see this as a realistic feature by release.  But the game cries out for them, and I'd love to see them in an expansion.

How does the AI handle choices in quests?

It's not that much work. They have a professional writer from Random House Publishing on the payroll. The way to make them not seem repeating is something I pioneered in WoM. You make three or four quests that are identical in the first screen. Each quest has a different outcome from the 4 choices given, so you never know for sure which outcome you will get. Now the quest is function on risk/reward instead of rinse/repeat. They used this in the rat killing quest for one example.

The quests we have now are basically the same ones from WoM with a little bit of polish. I would guess that as soon as their writer is done with the UI, Hiergamemnon, and tooltips, we will see new quest content. But I doubt that they have any text adventures planned. The writer is likely unaware of the possibilities in the quest xml. 

then someone should tell him

From my experiences in XML, its not all that hard to get into, maybe takes a day before you can start brute forcing stuff. (ie Copy and Guess)

The ones from King Arthur and Space Rangers 2, which is what I assume many people are thinking of, feel much less formulaic than this sounds.  I'm sure they involved quite a bit of work, if only to write them to be actually *interesting*, rather than just filling out a template.

1)Different character traits could unlock different dialogue options, so there have to be checks at various points. More checks=more interesting, but takes more time.

2)They involved things like challenging puzzles, mazes, codes, etc.  Those take a bit of thinking to write well.

I'm not saying you're wrong.  But I get the impression to really do these *well*, you kind of have to hit the ground running with it as a concept from the get go. It's the difference between dialogue choices in something like Planescape, and dialogue choices in something like Skyrim. If it were trivial to have rich dialogue trees, every game would have them.

Would love to see it though, either at release or in an expansion. The quests in the game at present dont hold a candle to something like King Arthur. I think they should even be the mechanism by which you  recruit champions.

I was assuming you were speaking of additions within the current game limitations. Stat checks are not possible. A shame really. It would be very fun to have stat checks and special dialogue options for units with certain traits or races. But yeah, that isn't within the scope of this game. Still, I have made some pretty cool quests that require a bit of thinking on the player's part to have a positive outcome. My focus is on having the player make insightful choices that reduce his risk of facing dangerous situations, causing each choice to be a unique adventure. That is the most we can expect from the current game. 

I look forward to your quest pack!

this would be better suited on more Heroes of might and magic like missions, like in the campaign. You do them once and don't have to repeat them.